


this time it's gonna stick

by gealbhan



Category: Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: Carnival, Comedy, Families of Choice, Gen, Post-Canon, don't question the logistics of this, gman is here but too briefly to tag, some bg boomer and sodashipping if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25591480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gealbhan/pseuds/gealbhan
Summary: “This carnival is ours. We can do anything with it. There are no rules or traditions or anything we have to follow, you know? We can just do whatever the hell we want.”“Yes, Gordon, I know that. And what I want to do is rig the fucking games.”The Science Team runs a carnival. It goes about as expected.
Relationships: Benrey & Bubby & Tommy Coolatta & Dr. Coomer & Gordon Freeman, Benrey/Gordon Freeman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 85





	this time it's gonna stick

**Author's Note:**

> i told myself hlvrai was the one (1) thing i would not write for and then i heard the carnival bit from act 3 again and something overtook me. thank you holly for delivering the coomer lines in that segment with such genuine glee -- it really got me. oh also, this is pretty light content-wise but mild emetophobia warning near the end; just jokes, no real v*mit, but jic.
> 
> title is, yes, from "dr. feelgood." enjoy!

Gordon wakes to the sound of knocking at his apartment door.

This isn’t as unfamiliar a situation as it should be; at first, he’s content to sleep for at least another hour or two, given it’s still dark in his room when he opens his eyes. Hell, he’d been more jarred the first time he’d woken up _without_ being pushed somewhere or in a much different place than he’d fallen asleep in. He rolls over, but the knocking intensifies.

Okay. Not going away. And something about the knocks is familiar, though Gordon would be hard-pressed to say _what_ with his brain busy trying to function again.

Gordon fumbles for his glasses on the nightstand. His knuckles graze something, but his hand slips, and the next thing he knows there’s a sound that is definitely his glasses hitting the ground and skittering across the carpet.

He stares at what he assumes is the wall in defeat. Fuck being presentable, he decides. If someone wants to see him at—what time even is it? He turns toward the neon red glare of the clock—four-twelve in the morning, then by God they are going to _get_ four-AM Gordon Freeman: Half-asleep, lacking a hand and 20/20 vision, dressed in an oversized MIT shirt and jogging shorts, braid mussed from sleep. As he stalks down the hall, relying on sheer muscle memory to carry him to the door, he can’t help but think of how he’s never been this grateful to not have Joshua at his place.

The living room seems emptier than it ought to, the couch cast in heavier shadow than usual, but Gordon disregards it. The knocking has stopped by the time he approaches the door, running his stiff-jointed hand through his hair and taking a quick breath.

…God, he should have installed a peephole or something. There’s something nerve-wracking about standing on the opposite side of the door from someone—or something—that can knock with that much force, and while Gordon doubts a murderer or alien would have the decency to knock, some part of him is tempted to backtrack, like, five feet to grab his old baseball bat from the hall closet just to be armed with something.

He waits. After a moment there comes another knock, this one more tentative, and a muffled voice that he _does_ consciously recognize.

He opens the door. He’s unsurprised to be met with a, “Hello, Gordon!” in far too bright a tone for the current time.

“Hello, Dr. Coomer,” says Gordon with a sigh. He sags forward, hand clutching on the door frame to support himself, and Dr. Coomer, the moonlight a pretty decent effect behind him, smiles. Gordon grimaces back. “Nearly gave me a heart attack, man. What’s—let’s go inside first, it’s fucking freezing out here.”

He turns and, when Coomer follows with a stilted apology, closes the door after them. Gordon waves him off while he attempts to return his pulse to a more normal level.

Three “Hello, Gordon!”s later, they get to the point: While talking with Bubby, Coomer had suddenly recalled a comment Gordon had made (and doesn’t remember making) about running a carnival after leaving Black Mesa and run over, as he phrases it, “as fast as my PowerLegs could take me.”

“A carnival?” Gordon repeats in bewilderment. He’s tempted to laugh, but he’s not sure if that’s because of the objective humor of the situation or his current semiconsciousness.

He means it more along the lines of _you ran here at four AM to talk about a carnival?_ but Coomer’s eyes light up at the opportunity. Either regret or acid reflux settles in Gordon’s abdomen. “Yes! Allow me to read you a small selection from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit once more: A traveling carnival, usually simply called a carnival, or travelling funfair in UK English, is an amusement show that may be made up of amusement rides, food vendors, merchandise vendors, games of chance and—”

“Okay. Yeah. Listen, Dr. Coomer, I’d love to hear more about this in just a little bit,” promises Gordon, holding up his hand and his stump, “but I literally cannot process a goddamn thing right now, sorry. I’m gonna—go shower and drink a lot of fucking caffeine, and we can talk about this in, like, thirty minutes. Wait right here, okay?” No response other than a blink. “Dr. Coomer?”

“Hello, Go—”

Taking this as an agreement, Gordon all but sprints back to his room to shower as fast as possible. After toweling off and dressing, he ties his still-damp hair into the cleanest ponytail he can assemble in under fifteen seconds. The hassle of finding and attaching his hand eats up the most time. A highly-advanced prosthetic developed by Drs. Bubby and Darnold (with some advice from Dr. Coomer, more on behalf of his personal enhancements than a significant amount of engineering knowledge) shouldn’t be so easy to lose, but Gordon swears the thing has a mind of its own.

By the time he emerges, the sun is out, and there are two more people—and a dog spread across one’s lap—sitting with Coomer, all cross-legged on the floor despite the unsettlingly empty couch right behind them. Gordon pauses in the doorway.

“How did you—never mind, don’t bother asking, Gordon. Hi.”

“Hello, Gordon!”

“Yes, hello again, Dr. Coomer.” Gordon snorts into his fist, now pretty sure it’s because of the sleep deprivation. “Hi, Tommy. Hi, Bubby.”

“Hi, Mr. Freeman!” says Tommy, and Sunkist raises his head to bark.

“Good morning,” says Bubby. “You look like shit.”

Without acknowledging that, Gordon flees to the kitchen for some coffee. Not the best to drink first thing in the morning, let alone out of a mug labeled _GAMER FUEL—_ which he thinks might have just materialized (spawned, perhaps) in his cupboard one day, because he didn’t buy it—but he thinks he has bigger problems at the moment.

He sets it down and returns to the living room before he can fill another mug. The ongoing conversation pauses, and before anyone can speak, Gordon joins the others on the floor and says, “I’m going to assume Dr. Coomer told you why he’s here and you’re here for the same reason, so I’m going to ask one very crucial question: Have any of you ever actually _been_ to a carnival before?”

Bubby hasn’t. Coomer maybe has—considering it at length seems to send him into an existential crisis. Tommy has, which is both surprising and reliving until he clarifies, “My dad used to take me to the carnival when I was—after he adopted me.”

“ _The_ carnival?” repeats Gordon. “What carnival?”

“The carnival, Mr. Freeman,” says Tommy. Gordon tries to figure out if _carnival_ had been capitalized or not. “What other carnival would it be?”

Gordon tries to exchange bemused looks with Bubby and Coomer, but neither of them seems as confused. Par for the course, he decides, dismissing it with a laugh and deciding not to pry any further.

It’s soon made clear that pretty much everyone is on board with Coomer’s enthusiasm to run a carnival, and Gordon has to admit that it’s not the wildest thing they’ve done—it sounds like it’d be fun, even, though the logistics elude him. It also soon becomes clear that no one else has any idea what to do either.

“I enjoy ‘Circus Clowns’ and ‘Carnival Games,’” is what Coomer has to say about this. He does not elaborate.

Bubby has no ideas to contribute whatsoever, and when Gordon raises a tentative question he snaps, “Of course I know what a carnival _is_ , Gordon! Have you forgotten about all of the knowledge implanted in me? I know perfectly well what carnivals are and what they entail, I’m just not certain what to suggest for _this_ carnival. Shut up.”

“Okay, man,” says Gordon, raising his hands.

Tommy’s only concrete idea is to invite his dad. This brings about a lot of mixed feelings, but the conversation comes to an abrupt halt when a click sounds.

The apartment goes dead silent. Oh, Gordon realizes, _that’_ _s_ what had been missing.

While everyone else—including Sunkist, who jumps to his paws with alarm—is still blinking with surprise, Gordon rubs his eyes and resolutely does not turn to face the window, which had just slid open. There’s another quick pause, and with a sniff, Sunkist settles back down. Coomer calls, “Hello, Benrey!”

“yooo,” comes Benrey’s voice from afar. The metallic _thud_ of his helmet hitting the window as he pulls himself inside follows.

It’s a running argument that Benrey, who has—without an explicit invitation, though Gordon has given up on stopping him—been taking up Gordon’s couch for the past five months, cannot enter the apartment like a normal human being (normal eldritch horror?). At this point, Gordon would take phasing through walls over crawling in through the window.

(“There is a goddamn _door_ for a reason,” he’d said the first time this had happened, thankfully in the middle of the afternoon when Joshua had been at school. “Use it. _Please_.”

“don’t feel like it,” Benrey had responded, head cocked at an unnatural angle. “and you gotta give me, like, a key, bro. can’t come in through the door if i don’t have one of those. fuckin’… gordon cringe forgetful moment, huh? pretty, uh, sucks.”

Gordon had taken a moment to reconsider every decision he’d made leading up to this point. He’d done that a lot lately. “God, I don’t—no, I’m not giving you a spare key. It’s unlocked when I’m here, and I’m sure you can find some way around it anyway, since you’ve still got, like, weird otherworldly powers.”

“huh? what are you talking about?”

“You know what, never mind. Just use the door.”)

As Benrey hops the rest of the way inside and hovers against the wall, Gordon glancing over his shoulder when he doesn’t say anything else, the apartment is quiet. Gordon can’t decide if that’s a blessing or a curse.

He opens his mouth to say something—he’s not sure what—but Bubby, eyebrow arched, speaks before he can. “Where the hell were _you_?”

Gordon pauses. He’s stopped keeping track of Benrey’s whereabouts by now. As… odd, in a word, as his presence is, Benrey isn’t the worst roommate in existence. The most he does is play shitty video games, fill Gordon’s fridge with shitty soda and energy drinks—which seems to be more to be obnoxious than anything, because he doesn’t eat or drink much, except sometimes biting the top off a bottle of Mountain Dew and guzzling it down while holding eye contact—and wander in and out like the most bipedal, uncomfortable laidback outdoor cat ever.

He had once brought back a pigeon, even, which is honestly kind of funny in retrospect. It had been alive, and it had flown right out the window upon being released (at Gordon’s insistence). Still, Benrey’s resemblance to an expectant cat unaware that its owner is putting it and the local ecosystem alike in danger had been uncanny.

So distracted is he by this moment of reflection that Gordon misses Benrey’s reply, though odds are it was something like “what?” He glances out of Tommy out of the corners of his eyes and knows in an _instant_ what he’s about to say.

Gordon tries to convey a very firm _no, we are not involving Benrey in this_ without speaking, but Tommy doesn’t so much as look his way. Instead, he smiles in Benrey’s direction. “Benrey,” he says, “we’re going to run a carnival! Do you want to help us?”

“Ignore that,” says Gordon while Benrey is still blinking. “You’re not going to be a part of this.”

“That’s a bit rude, Gordon,” says Coomer.

“Indeed it was,” says Bubby, like a hypocrite.

“yeah, man, i’m just chilling here. don’t have to be so mean. gordon, uhhh—gordon feetmean. meanman.”

“Yeah, it kind of was, but I stand behind it on behalf of that _horrible_ wordplay.” Gordon can already hear the useless argument that could evolve out of this, so he decides to pick his battles and accept defeat here and now. “You know what, whatever. I’ll humor this for now. I guess fuckin’ Benrey is helping us plan a carnival now.”

“nice,” says Benrey before sprawling across the couch and booting up _Metal Gear Solid_ _3_ , seeming to ignore the rest of them altogether.

Everyone takes a second to process that. Gordon takes a breath and ramps over it: “Anyway, about Mr. Coolatta—”

They manage to resolve that with a simple compromise: Tommy’s father can drop by, but any and all attempts should be taken to prevent him and Gordon from interacting given how deeply uncomfortable every conversation they’ve had has been.

What follows is an unspoken but universal agreement that to plan a carnival they will, in fact, have to _plan_ a carnival. Thus, they launch into an intense debate about what their carnival will offer. Benrey makes the occasional comment, often unhelpful and unrelated, but it’s mostly between everyone on the floor. Plenty of games are discussed, enough options to make Gordon’s head spin. Coomer mentions a dunk tank; this is vetoed within five minutes after some online digging on its origins and the fact that the concept reminds Bubby too much of his tube. Clowns are also brought up, which Gordon puts a firm moratorium on, thinking but not saying that there are already a few in the room. Other ideas that crop up are a strength tester, a shooting gallery (with water guns), a funhouse, and skee ball.

Snacks are, surprisingly, what they can come to the firmest agreement on. There will be vending machines—Gordon will _not_ destroy them, he informs Benrey when asked, but Coomer reassures everyone that he can jostle them open with his fists—and other food and drinks for sale.

“I can ask Darnold to help with that—he can bring all the Powerade,” says Tommy. Sunkist’s tail thumps against the ground.

“What, he’s still making more?”

“Of course, Mr. Freeman! There are—there have been six new flavors released!”

“I hate Powerade,” says Bubby, injecting himself into the exchange before Gordon can remark upon how impressive that is. “Will there be bug juice?”

“Uh—”

“Why not,” says Gordon. “We’re going all out, so let’s go all out.”

He regrets saying so when, from there, things spiral, as they tend to with this group. Gordon draws the line once everyone starts suggesting things like Ferris wheels and rollercoasters, the questions that arise from these ideas also applying to the less fanciful plans they’ve made.

“Guys,” he says, “how the hell are we actually going to put any of this together? And _when_? I know most of you guys just do—basically whatever most of the time—” there’s a distinct _You’ve created a time paradox!_ from the TV, followed by a flat _bummer, bro_ from Benrey “—but I do have work.” He’s off for the summer, but summer isn’t that long.

“Oh, you just leave that up to us, Gordon,” says Coomer, eyes crinkling.

That’s what Gordon had been afraid of. “I’m going to be honest with you, Dr. Coomer—that does not instill the most confidence in me, but I’m gonna trust you with it because I’m too tired to argue.”

And so, three-and-a-half weeks later, Gordon finds himself sitting at an admissions stand, a somewhat concerning amount of laughter and screaming behind him as he welcomes people into a still-unnamed carnival on its opening day.

He’s still not entirely sure how they’d gotten access to these city-limits fairgrounds, or how they’d been able to assemble everything so fast. Within days, packages addressed to one Harold P. Coomer had started showing up at Gordon’s apartment (for no clear reason other than storage purposes, and presumably purchased with leftover heist money), but they’d only started setting things up last week, after Gordon had received a text from Coomer only containing an address and a single smiley-face emoji.

_That_ had been ominous, but that’s not anything unfamiliar when it comes to Dr. Coomer, so Gordon had driven there with the boxes in the back of his truck. It had taken multiple trips to get them loaded in—and less to get them out, with the help of Coomer’s Extendo-Arms (no PlayCoin™ required) and Benrey, who had somehow spontaneously appeared (or so Gordon has to assume, because he hadn’t wasted time asking) in the passenger seat midway through the drive, prompting Gordon to almost accelerate into oncoming traffic. Benrey’s immediate response of “wooowww, not poggers at all” still haunts him.

Gordon had gotten curious about the boxes’ contents over the weeks he’d had them in his home, especially when Joshua had asked about them the weekend he was over. The reveal had been… somewhat disappointing. Half had been filled with supplies for carnival games and attractions; the other half, prizes.

The most exciting part had been the full box of worms on strings, which Benrey and Tommy had snatched two from. They’d proceeded to be no help for the rest of the afternoon, alternating between sparring with their worms and—in Benrey’s case, and to Tommy’s offense—teasing Sunkist with them.

The scenery had made up for it, anyway, as Gordon had found out when he’d seen that Coomer had gotten ahold of a rollercoaster after all. Only one, but it circles the entire fairgrounds, ubiquitous and somewhat foreboding but pretty cool.

Even now, Gordon can hear it whistling around. It, the laughter and screaming, and the most certainly not royalty-free music playing from speakers Darnold had set up serve as an odd background track, but the mishmash is fitting somehow, emblematic of the overall chaos of this event.

It doesn’t, however, serve to abate Gordon’s building boredom. He’s worked retail before, so he’s used to the whole rigmarole, but sitting still (for the most part, given the bracelets he occupies his hands with) is driving him insane. Every five minutes—two, in the absence of new visitors—he crosses and uncrosses his ankles.

He keeps glancing down at the commemorative photo taped to the counter. Gordon hadn’t put it there, but it draws his attention anyway, through sheer obtrusiveness if nothing else.

It’s halfway decent, despite the maneuvering involved in taking it. By Tommy’s insistence, they’d all been in it—the two of them, Bubby and Coomer, Sunkist, Darnold, and Benrey, who Gordon hadn’t been sure would show up on film, but there he is at one end of the line, lazily smiling and holding up a blue worm-on-a-string. Darnold stands at the other end, on the opposite side of Sunkist from Tommy, who’s crouched with his arms around his dog. Gordon is dead center, bent over with laughter because Benrey had said _“everybody say feet”_ just as the timer had gone off, which hadn’t been _funny_ but had been unexpected enough to startle it out of him. Bubby and Coomer are on his other side, both in power stances, to the level that Gordon’s mind cannot process them.

A throat clear sounds before him. Gordon quickly smiles at their next set of attendants, a row having accumulated, and leans back in his chair with a quick sigh. He’s been taking stretching breaks, but he still feels a little like his brain is going to fold in on itself.

He checks his watch. It’s been a couple of hours since the carnival started, and the stream of people is starting to thin as it grows later. It’d probably be safe to head out for a while, maybe take over one of the game stalls in the carnival proper. Gordon doesn’t want to leave the entrance unmanned, though, given how short-staffed they already are, so he tracks down the first person he can find, which happens—for better or worse—to be Benrey and passes this duty off to him.

“Do not—hey. Look at me.” Gordon places his prosthetic hand on Benrey’s shoulder to keep him from fleeing. “ _Do not_ ask anyone for their passport, or hypnotize anyone with the Black Mesa Sweet Voice, or any other weird bullshit. And this one feels like it should just be common sense, but absolutely one-hundred-percent do not kill anyone. This is a normal, calm carnival. Got it? You—do you agree? Do you get it? Are you listening to me at all?”

Benrey doesn’t answer but does look away with an almost inaudible cough. Not going to waste his time with this any longer, Gordon pats his arm and leaves, hoping he hasn’t inadvertently doomed them all.

He wanders for a couple of minutes, taking everything in. He’d thought this yesterday evening, while putting together the finishing touches, but there’s something beautiful about this carnival. It’s nothing like the fancier, more child-oriented fairs he’d attended years ago—both as a kid and with Joshua—but it’s something in its own right, if only because they’ve made it so. Its jagged imperfection reflects the people behind it: A group of dysfunctional jackasses (and one ray of sunshine, the smartest of them all) who’ve somehow come to rely upon and, in a sense of the word, love one another. The carnival is all of them as much as it is its own entity.

Or maybe it’s not that deep. Maybe sometimes a carnival is just a carnival. But still, damn if it doesn’t feel good to have been a part of putting together something of this caliber.

As he walks, Gordon wonders—on a less sentimental note—how many of the games are rigged. Bubby had been running around like a madman the past week, with an expression on his face that Gordon has come to associate with spontaneous combustion, though Gordon had only confronted him yesterday, to find out that he’d been weighing down the bottles to make the milk bottle toss unbeatable.

Gordon had, naturally, asked why, and Bubby had given him his patented _you’re a dumbass, Gordon_ look. “Because it’s a carnival. The games are supposed to be rigged.”

“You know there’s no _supposed to be_ about this, right?” Gordon had asked, because sometimes they (himself included) get caught up in how things are supposed to be, what’s right, what’s normal, even with the simplest—and most complex—of things. It hits some of them harder than others, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if this had been an expression of that indescribable feeling of abnormality. “Like—this carnival is ours. We can do anything with it. There are no rules or traditions or anything we have to follow, you know? We can just do whatever the hell we want.”

“Yes, Gordon, I know that. And what I want to do is rig the fucking games.”

“I—yeah. Okay. Fair point.”

With that, Gordon had let him be, figuring they weren’t going to get checked out by any authorities—and if they were, everybody knows what happens to boot boys when the Science Team comes around—and he could always get Tommy or Coomer to unrig things later.

He’d also ignored the _Bubby is Best_ carved into the side of the stall. He wouldn’t be surprised to spot that elsewhere; Bubby does have a knack for doing things when Gordon isn’t looking.

Speaking of which—Gordon stops at an empty game near the entrance, hosting a basketball hoop and a row of basketballs to toss through it. He’s pretty sure he saw Bubby fucking around with it yesterday. Still, he decides to set up shop here for now.

Sitting here isn’t much better than sitting near the entrance, but it does give Gordon a more direct view of the carnival’s interior, though he can’t quite spot any of the rest of the Science Team from here. He also can’t see smoke or anything to that extent, so Gordon crosses his fingers that all is going well.

Here, he also has something beyond basic fidgeting to do with his hands. So long as he isn’t getting customers, he snatches up one of the spare basketballs—Coomer had made sure to invest in extra materials all across the board in case of any unfortunate incidents—and tosses it between his hands, with the occasional casual throw toward the hoop, all of which send the ball bouncing off and flying back at his face. Each time, Gordon just manages to catch it before he can ring in this opening night with a broken nose and/or glasses.

“Yikes,” he mutters the fourth time this happens. He examines the ball. “Either Bubby rigged this, or I’ve got _way_ shittier depth perception than I thought.”

It doesn’t take long for him to get an answer. A few minutes later, some pre-teens flock over. With every toss, they fail to get the ball through the hoop, which looks circular from the tossing distance but, as Gordon finds out after they leave, it’s ovular, a size too small for the basketballs to fall through.

He’ll have to take care of that later. Bubby might go back and rig it again, but Gordon will unrig it again if that happens.

“Try again later,” Gordon encourages the kids, giving them a sympathetic smile-grimace from some place of fatherly instincts. “Maybe come back in a couple of days.”

They take this in relative stride for a bunch of twelve-year-olds. “Cool hand, dude,” one even comments before leaving.

Gordon half-smiles, though he doesn’t think they see it, and runs his other hand down his metal joints. It reminds him of Joshua’s reaction the first time he’d seen it, about a month after Gordon’s return from Black Mesa, the usual every-other-weekend schedule postponed for therapy and a general readjustment period. He’d been pacing all morning long wondering how Joshua would react, only to have him gasp and say, “Papa, your new hand is so cool! It’s like Luke Skywalker’s!”

This had meant very little to Gordon in terms of _Star Wars_ knowledge, because he’s never seen it all the way through (his ex-husband had considered this a crime), but it had almost made him cry. He thinks he’d just squeezed Joshua in so tight an embrace that they’d both choked.

He’s had a lot of moments like that. Sometimes he forgets the unrelenting optimism of seven-year-olds, his son in particular, and then it hits him hard.

…Like now, doing something completely unrelated. Gordon clicks his tongue and flings the basketball at the hoop, not even trying to get it right now that he knows it’s fucked.

Word seems to spread that the basketball toss is busted, because Gordon doesn’t get many more visitors. This gives him free rein of the hoop whenever he gets the urge to move around, which is often, and an opportune place to observe the rest of the carnival.

The amount of traffic they’re getting is surprising. Gordon had seen the crowds trickling in from the entrance, but he hadn’t kept a tally of attendants or anything, and it’s different to see everyone within the actual fairgrounds, talking and laughing and having fun. It makes him smile. His musings from earlier—about the odd innate beauty of this whole thing—sneak back up on him. They’ve done something special here, he decides. Even if not by regular standards, it’s at least special to him.

Within another hour, with only a couple more visits to Gordon’s stall, the sky has faded from a cloudy blue to a pink-tinged orange, and Gordon’s stomach has started growling. He waits a few more minutes before standing when no one else shows up. Eating, he decides, currently outweighs the need for fun and profit.

On the way, he passes Bubby’s rigged milk bottle toss. Bubby is perched behind the counter with his hands steepled together in the perfect mad scientist pose, glasses shining to obscure his eyes as he considers his next victim. Who is maybe fourteen at most, and who’s desperately trying to knock over all of the bottles only to fail upon reaching the bottom row every time. Bubby doesn’t even bother hiding his smirk.

“Jesus Christ,” mutters Gordon before continuing down the path.

He finds Tommy next, at the shooting gallery-type game where water guns are used to knock down rows of rubber ducks. No one seems to be running this one. Maybe Tommy had been, at one point, but that’s all but moot now, given he’s now playing it—the only player, though there are four more water guns holstered—with that intent look Gordon had grown most used to seeing in the thick of battle, usually accentuated with blood he’d never seen to know was on his face.

Sunkist is sitting behind him, looking very polite in his vest and snapping up any stray water that sprays in his general direction. He whines in greeting when Gordon rounds the corner. Tommy is too busy firing at another row of ducks to notice.

“Hey! Having fun, Tommy?”

Gordon regrets making that his opener—the next thing he knows, Tommy is turning to face him, and knowing that the gun in Tommy’s hands is plastic and filled with water does nothing to lessen the instinctive spike of panic. Tommy’s bright smile only worsens matters. At least this time his face isn’t covered in blood?

“Hello, Mr. Freeman!” he says cheerfully. “I am! I’ve won a lot of rounds of this game so far.”

“Yeah, you’re used to killing birds, huh? Better not let Benrey over here, he’ll explode the whole fucking stall.” Gordon shakes his head and looks between Tommy’s face and the end of the gun. “Um. Could you not point that in my face when you talk to me, though, please, buddy? Getting some pretty strong déjà vu over here.”

“Oh—sorry, Mr. Freeman. Instinct.” Tommy sets it back in the machine and steps away from the stall, letting few kids to have their turn at the game. “What have you been doing? Are we not letting people in anymore?”

“Nah, we are, I just stuck Benrey in charge of admissions.” Saying it aloud reminds Gordon of what a dubious decision that had been. “It’s probably fine.”

“Benrey is a valuable employee here at the carnival,” Tommy agrees, sparking that feeling of déjà vu at the back of Gordon’s mind again. He grimaces, tilting his head back and forth, but Tommy’s smile doesn’t falter.

They both wait for the current round of the shooting gallery game to wrap up, Gordon occupying himself by—with Tommy’s permission—petting Sunkist, whose head he barely has to lean down to reach. Sunkist gets up on his hind legs to lick Gordon’s face. Gordon laughs, pushing him back and wiping the slobber off his face.

The kids finish their game, and Tommy hands out prizes—and allows them to pet Sunkist too. Once they’ve run off to find their parents, Tommy turns back to Gordon, who’s been watching with a smile, and asks, “Do you want to play a round of this with me? It’s—it’s really fun.”

“Well—oh, what the hell, why not.” Gordon takes up another of the water guns and weighs it in his hands, testing the grip—he feels like it should be _easier_ to use after handling real guns, but somehow it only seems harder. “I’m… honestly not sure if I remember how to shoot one of these.”

Tommy picks his water gun back up. “It’s all instinct for me, Mr. Freeman,” he says. “You just have to squeeze the trigger all the time.”

“Wh—no! That’s really shitty trigger discipline! We’ve had this conversation dozens of times! Oh, fuck, did the game start?”

Tommy beats him by a long shot, but Gordon still nets enough points (he thinks that’s how this one works) to earn a prize from one of the lower rows. He grabs a bag of cotton candy. Tommy nods sagely at his choice, then goes right back to playing the game.

Gordon is pretty sure it isn’t a deliberate cue for him to leave, but a newfound ache in his stomach reminds him he should get a move on anyway. “Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he says with a farewell pat to Sunkist’s head. “Keep, uh—keep killing those birds with water.” A shot of water goes astray and hits Gordon in the side of the face, interrupting whatever train of thought he’d been on and making him sputter. “Not me! Don’t kill _me_ with water! No shooting Gordon!”

“Sorry, Mr. Freeman! Misfire!”

Gordon wipes water off his cheek and waves Tommy off. It’s far from the most egregious thing someone has subjected him to in the past year.

Luckily, the food and drinks area (a generous term; it’s one patch of land in the middle of the fun and games, hosting a single large cart and several rows of picnic tables) isn’t far from here. Gordon sighs aloud when the smell of fair food and soda hits him.

He approaches the cart. “Hey, Darnold. You’re still open?”

Darnold glances up, exchanging an elephant ear and a bottle of water for five bucks. “Oh, Dr. Freeman. Well… yes,” he says, going on before Gordon can open his mouth, “but you have disrespected my potions once before. Can I trust you to appreciate my prized creations?”

“Er,” says Gordon, blinking, realizing that he hasn’t interacted all that much with Darnold since they’d reconnected post-Black Mesa, “yeah? Yeah, you definitely can. Sorry about that, that was—a really stressful week for me.” He smiles, though it feels—and looks, he’s sure—more like a grimace.

“The horrors of war _can_ break anyone.” Darnold’s expression flickers for a moment before clearing, and he nods at a cooler behind him. “Would you like some newly-developed evil-flavor Powerade?”

“Uh—thanks, but I think I’d rather have regular Powerade. Not sure I want to fuck around with your experimental stuff again.” Gordon holds up his arm. He does miss the minigun a little (though he plans to never mention this to Bubby in case he makes him a new version), but the experience had still been deeply unsettling.

Darnold presses his lips together with disappointment but nods. “Very well, Dr. Freeman. Allow me one moment. Will that be all?”

Gordon glances at the sign, wishing he’d taken a moment to properly prepare an order beforehand. “And fries. Thanks.”

After a couple of minutes, during which Gordon looks anywhere but into the cart, Darnold hands over a bottle of Powerade (with a silly straw attached) and a basket of very greasy fries, which also look like they’ve been spritzed with some soda. Not the worst thing Gordon has eaten.

“Thank you,” he says again, handing over his money, a remarkably low amount for fair food. He hasn’t gone to a carnival in a few years, but one distinct memory he does have is how goddamn expensive everything is for no good reason.

With one last exchange of nods, he scurries off to seat himself at the end of an empty picnic table. It feels a _little_ pathetic. Something akin to waiting for your partner at an empty restaurant table, smiling every time the waiter refills your water, hollower and hollower as it sinks in that you’re getting stood up and, by extension, your relationship is dying and maybe has been for longer than the two of you are willing to admit.

…Not that that’s a feeling Gordon has experienced often. He shoves a handful of fries into his mouth before his blood sugar levels can drop to the point of simulating a depressive episode.

The food isn’t bad. Pretty good, really, and seasoned more appropriately than the Powerade-like appearance would suggest. Gordon is sure the carnival would pass any decent health and safety inspection procedure from an outsider—or at least it would as long as none of his trigger-happy friends got, well, trigger-happy.

“Not a better train of thought, Gordon,” he mutters, now glad he’d opted for the lonely picnic table a few feet away from the other rows.

He goes about the rest of his meal—if fries, cotton candy, and Powerade could be called that—in relative silence aside from the chewing and sipping. Out of the corners of his eyes, he watches Darnold switch between filling orders and playing something on his laptop, which is propped precariously on the counter but doesn’t seem to be in a significant amount of danger. It’s impressive, Gordon thinks. Would that he could multitask so well.

Once he’s finished, full but not to the point of discomfort, he tosses his stuff and waves goodbye to Darnold before setting back toward his stall.

A voice stops him before the basketball hoop even comes back into sight: “yo. feetman.”

Gordon turns and comes face-to-face with a large stuffed bear. Its lopsided eyes reflect his face. It’s a shade of orange that almost hurts to look at, and there’s a strip of black fabric around its neck. If Gordon leans up a little, he can see the top of the helmet behind it. Though it wouldn’t have really taken a genius—or a PhD, in this case—to piece together who on earth would shove a stuffed animal in his face while calling him _Feetman_ to begin with.

“What is that,” says Gordon flatly, proving his former thesis advisor correct: There _is_ such a thing as a stupid question.

Benrey lowers the toy just enough that his blank, judgmental eyes are visible. “carnival prize. toy for babies. see? here. for babies. little children.” He holds it forward, expectant, and Gordon takes a full step back.

“Wh—I don’t want that. Specifically from you. Where did you even get it from?”

“skee ball,” says Benrey, looking over his shoulder in what must be the general direction of the skee ball machine.

It does put Gordon slightly at ease that he hadn’t been fucking with a game involving weapons, fake or no, though he’s pretty sure anything could turn into a weapon in Benrey’s hands. “Okay. Look, man, I don’t have time for this right now—and neither do you, I’m pretty sure, since you should still be letting people in,” he adds. “Why _aren’t_ you still at the admissions stand, anyway?”

“mmm… didn’t feel like it.”

“You—whatever. Again, I don’t really have time for this. Go show your cool new toy off to someone else.”

Benrey doesn’t say anything, just continues holding out the stuffed bear. It’s bordering on menacing, or at the very least, weird.

“What—why—I don’t—”

Benrey spits out a trail of balls, fading from a warm golden yellow to a more muted blue, along with a high-pitched beep. Before Gordon can react, Benrey all but throws the stuffed animal at him and then turns and speedwalks away. Gordon’s startled yelp of “HEY—” dies midway as he, reflexes kicking in, lunges to catch the toy before it falls to the ground, losing track of Benrey in the crowd as a result. Not that he particularly cares about that part.

Gordon straightens and stares at the stuffed bear. Little beads for eyes stare back at him. It’s a little squashed from the speed and force with which he’d grabbed it, but otherwise no worse for wear—and not honestly that bad. Not the most disgusting thing Benrey could give him.

It’s pretty cute, really. Gordon has a seven-year-old son who’s collected toys since about birth, grabbing onto the first toy from the hospital gift shop tighter than he had Gordon’s hand, so he’s seen a lot of stuffed animals in his time. Out of all of the stuffed bears he’s seen, this one is a winner. Solid eight out of ten. Whatever it’s made of is soft, almost as much so as Sunkist’s fur, and cozy, lending itself to some natural hug factor. Gordon doesn’t hug it, because he’s a grown man in public, but he does smile a little as he holds it up to better examine it.

He’s jarred from his thoughts when someone bumps into him. Gordon reminds himself that he’s in a decent-sized crowd and mutters, holding the stuffed bear tighter before it can slip from his grasp, “The hell are you doing, Gordon?”

He steps off the main path and looks back at the bear. Part of him is tempted to toss it or somehow pass it onto someone else— _not_ Benrey, as he doesn’t want to think about whatever conclusion Benrey would draw from him returning it—but, he reasons, it would be a shame to just ditch it. Plus, he doesn’t have time for anything like that now.

He tucks it back under his arm with a sigh. All else fails, Gordon figures, he can just give it to Joshua this weekend.

That settled, he continues on his path. Again, he’s stopped within seconds, this time by a familiar shout. Dread or indigestion creeping up, Gordon turns to see Coomer in front of the strength-testing machine he’d insisted they include. This is already a little terrifying, because Gordon knows what Coomer is capable of (and that he and Bubby had been testing its functionality earlier this week and had it ringing with the smallest of punches), but the amount of smoke Gordon can see sets off alarm bells in his brain.

Keeping the teddy bear tucked into his side, Gordon hurries over. Coomer stands with his sleeves torn off and face twisted with glee. Gordon can’t even begin to parse what happened to the strength tester before him, but at a glance, he can see that it no longer seems to be functioning. A small crowd has amassed. Gordon pushes through, the shocked and awed whispers reflecting his own reaction.

“Did you _break_ it? Already?” Gordon laughs despite himself, clutching his stomach as he threatens to double over with it.

“Hello, Gordon! This ‘Strength Tester’ was no match for _these_ guns!”

Gordon continues to cackle. “Yeah,” he manages to say, “I can see that! Good God, Dr. Coomer. How the hell—you’re not even in, like, SuperPlayer™ mode, are you? You didn’t take my PlayCoins™, yeah? This was just for you?”

Coomer bounces on his feet in what looks like an idle animation from a fighting game. He offers no response to Gordon’s question, which is honestly the _one_ question he really would like answered.

“Dr. Coomer? Hey, Dr. Coomer. You didn’t use my PlayCoins™, right?”

“Oh my God, what happened? I heard an explosion and it wasn’t my doing,” comes Bubby’s voice as he steps over. He stops, staring at the wreckage the same way Gordon had. “Holy shit, you broke the strength tester?”

“I’m going to assume you were a good friend and didn’t use more of my PlayCoins™.”

“Yes, Dr. Bubby! Look!” says Coomer, ignoring Gordon and gesturing to the shattered machine before them. “Marvel at my might!”

“Oh, I’m marveling,” mutters Gordon. “Uh—good thing we bought that instead of renting it, right? We’re still out money, but at least we’re not, like, in debt or anything. I don’t know why I’m saying _we_. It’s all your money, Dr. Coomer. Aaand you’re not listening to me,” he adds; the other two are busy eyeing the busted machine and laughing between themselves, Bubby muttering something about how he could have broken it sooner. Which Gordon doesn’t doubt for a second. “Good luck with—this. See you guys later.”

He receives no reply but a distant, “He—” which he snorts at.

Nothing else deters Gordon from making it back to his stall, which sees no further activity over the next thirty-odd minutes. Gordon doesn’t mind—he’s already tired, and there’s no real point in the game in its current state. Maybe they should hire more people for the stalls—and possibly cut down on the hours the carnival runs for. _He’s_ only human, no matter what his companions can say.

While he’s still thinking of it, Gordon adjusts what he can about this game. He takes down the hoop, writes _UNDER CONSTRUCTION FOR TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, COME BACK LATER!_ on a piece of paper, and pins that up. Not the cleanest fix, but it’ll have to suffice while he works on getting a fairer hoop attached.

A while longer, he’s scrolling through his phone—not that there’s much there besides social media, because the only people he actively talks to aside from his ex-husband are here—when he hears a, “Hi, Mr. Freeman!”

“Hm?” Gordon jolts upright to see Tommy walk over with Darnold walking alongside him and Sunkist trailing behind on his leash. Gordon regrets taking the hoop down now, because part of him wants to see if Tommy—whom he figures would be the only person to win a rigged game through pure luck—could pull a toss off, but he smiles and figures he can try another night. “Oh, hey.”

“Hello, Dr. Freeman. What happened here?” asks Darnold, squinting at the sign.

“Bubby.” Gordon doesn’t elaborate, despite the exchange of looks between Tommy and Darnold. He leans back in his seat. “Are you heading home now?”

“Not yet. My potions are no longer available for the evening,” says Darnold, and Gordon nods, figuring that if he hadn’t stopped selling soda as they get closer to bedtime, parents would have complained, “but we’ve been playing some of the games the carnival offers.”

Gordon glances at Tommy, who nods in confirmation. “I won a scarf for Sunkist! He looks even more perfect now.”

“Oh. Huh. I’d offer you guys a turn at this, but as you can see, it’s a little, uh—” Gordon grimaces. “Maybe in a couple of days. Anyway, what _are_ you here to say, then?”

Tommy opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, a bright “Hello, Gordon!” comes from Gordon’s other side. Sunkist barks in surprise, and Gordon jumps, spinning around to find Coomer and Bubby standing beside him, the former with a cheerful smile like nothing is wrong and the latter with a smug expression.

“Don’t just _do_ that, man,” says Gordon, clutching the counter for support and shooting a _hold on_ look at Tommy and Darnold. “Hi, though. Did you fix the strength tester?”

“Yes,” says Bubby, “and then I broke it again.”

“He did!” confirms Coomer, beaming. “But not to worry, Gordon. We’ll order a brand new one tomorrow, perhaps a sturdier one—make it more of a challenge this time, hm?”

Gordon opens his mouth, but Bubby, glancing at the sign, beats him to it: “I see you noticed my… tweaks.”

“I—of course I _noticed_ , I had a whole conversation with you yesterday about rigging games.” Gordon huffs, trying not to make it sound like a laugh. “Don’t do it again with this one, okay?”

“I can make no promises, Gordon.”

“That’s the best I’m gonna get, huh? Oh, and here comes Benrey,” says Gordon, gesturing to the figure skulking toward them, whom everyone else turns to look at too. “We aren’t closed, right? Like, there are still people here playing our games and stuff. Everyone has just decided to come over here for some reason.”

“oh hey you guys are all over here,” says Benrey, whose hoodie, Gordon notices for the first time all day, reads, _gamers don’t die they respawn_. “that’s cool.”

“Yeah. Pretty cool. Anyway, what were you about to say before everyone else interrupted, Tommy?”

Everyone else is silenced by a mere glance around, not even an actively intimidating one, from Tommy. “Before we close up, I—I wanted us all to ride the rollercoaster together. That sounds fun, right, Mr. Freeman?”

Of all of the things Gordon had expected Tommy to say, this had not been one of them. He blinks and glances up. “The rollercoaster?”

“Yes, the big one right behind us,” deadpans Bubby. “Surely you’ve noticed it, Gordon.”

“Yes, I know what rollercoaster he’s talking about, Bubby,” says Gordon with painstaking patience, because he is nicer to his friends than Bubby is. “I just—you want us to ride it?”

Tommy nods. No one else objects—Coomer looks more excited by the prospect, in fact—so Gordon takes a breath in through his teeth and looks around him, once again admiring the architecture of the rollercoaster as much as it puts him on edge. The latest ride has just finished, leaving its passengers all somewhat green in the face.

_It could be worse_ , Gordon tells himself. _They could have invested in one of those goddamn_ _UFO_ _thi_ _ngs._

It not being the worst possible situation doesn’t inspire him to hop aboard. “Yeah, no, sorry. I’m not fucking going on that. I’ve got this thing about heights—”

“So does Dr. Bubby,” points out Coomer.

“You—what? You’ve been in space. Multiple times.”

“Yes, and I never looked down,” says Bubby, tilting his chin up.

Gordon decides not to ask anything else about this. “Okay. Heights aren’t the only thing, uh, offputting about rollercoasters, anyway—I don’t like feeling off-balance or moving at extremely nauseating speeds, either,” says Gordon, “and that’s basically everything involved in rollercoasters.”

“boooo, chicken head,” says Benrey.

Tommy frowns. “Well, we’re not going without you, Mr. Freeman.”

“ _I_ would go without him,” mutters Bubby.

“I—listen, I’d love to go with you guys, honest, but—” Gordon glances at the stuffed bear sitting on the counter. Is he really going to use it as an excuse? Yes, he decides in a fraction of a second, he is. “Uh,” he says, gesturing toward the toy, “what about this? Will someone take it if I just leave it here?”

“oh, yo, what’s that? did you steal that?”

“What the hell are you talking about? You literally gave it to me less than two hours ago.” Benrey only blinks, blank-faced, and Gordon spreads his hands in defeat.

Tommy, of course, has an immediate solution: “Sunkist can watch over it! He can’t come on the rollercoaster, anyway. Sunkist, you—you’ll be okay by yourself for a few minutes, right?” Sunkist barks in response, and Tommy scratches behind his ears with a pleased smile. “See, Sunkist is happy to help out, Mr. Freeman.”

“He sure is the perfect dog.” Now left with nothing to defend himself but a plain _I don’t want to_ , which Gordon holds _should_ be an acceptable reason, he drums his fingers against the counter in consideration. It’ll only take a few minutes at best, and it does seem like a pretty perfect closer to the day. “Okay, I’ll ride the damn rollercoaster,” he decides, with a beleaguered sigh, “but Benrey has to sit in front of me so that if I barf, it hits him in the back of the head. Don’t say how unfair that is, Benrey, you had my hand cut off and tried to kill us all so I think if I puke I’m obligated to puke on you. Emphasis on _if_.”

“Deal,” says Bubby.

“Now, Benrey, no more of your classic pranks,” chides Coomer. “It was very funny last time, but we don’t want Dr. Freeman getting stuck to the seat of a rollercoaster car!”

Gordon does _not_ trust the look that crosses Benrey’s face at that, but he just has to hope Benrey doesn’t have access to glue now.

“Thank you, Mr. Freeman. This will be fun!” Tommy promises.

Off they march, Coomer providing ambient noise in the form of the Wikipedia article on carnivals as he leads the charge. Gordon brings up the rear, psyching himself up all the while.

Benrey takes the front seat. He has to be reminded to strap himself in—as funny as it might be to see him go flying, no one seems to actually know if he can die again, and any attempt to ask Benrey himself is an endless maze with no answer to be found. Gordon, Tommy, and Darnold manage to squeeze into the middle row, and Bubby and Coomer slide into the back.

They sit there for a moment, unmoving. There is, Gordon realizes, no one operating the rollercoaster because every carnival employee is in the car.

“Wait, who’s going to—?” is all Gordon manages to say before his vision flickers, and for the briefest of instants, he manages to see a tall, gaunt man in a suit by the tracks before they’re shooting along the tracks so fast that he can’t see anything. “Tommy! Your dad’s here tonight?!”

“Yes! Should he not—should I not have invited him?! You said—”

“No, no, it’s fine!” Gordon squeezes his eyes shut as they hurtle up a loop and clutches the side of the car for support. Between the wind in his ears and cheering in multiple directions, it’s hard to hear himself talk. “I just—how long has he _been_ here?”

“What are you saying, Mr. Freeman? I—I can’t—”

“NEVER MIND WE’LL TALK ABOUT IT LATER,” yells Gordon, pressing a hand to his mouth.

Once he gets used to the reckless careening of the car against the tracks, which has to be a design flaw, and can look toward the horizon without producing another wave of nausea, it’s—not all that bad. Gordon still feels sick, but there’s something refreshing about being up this high, so long as he heeds Bubby’s roundabout advice of not looking down. Benrey’s raucous laughter in the front seat, Tommy and Darnold’s shouting right in Gordon’s ear, and Bubby and Coomer’s cheers from the back are somehow all as reassuring as they are obnoxious. Gordon relaxes his shoulders and hangs on for the ride.

When they hit the highest point of the track, an explosion sounds behind them, startling Gordon upright. His instinctive panic doesn’t quite cease when he processes the bright bursts of color and sparks against the darkening sky, because they’re still _really_ fucking loud, but the visual effect is, he has to admit, pretty cool.

“Wh—” Gordon wheezes with laughter. “Who set up fireworks? What the fuck?”

Bubby’s cheer of, “YES!” is all the answer he needs for that. Gordon covers an ear and watches the sky as they descend, fireworks continuing to flash with each smaller loop they meet.

Gordon is almost disappointed when the ride comes to an end, both an eternity and a few short seconds later. They come to a screeching halt at the end of the tracks. Mr. Coolatta is once again nowhere in sight. Everyone else stays in the car, reeling and laughing amongst themselves, but Gordon drags himself to the feet he can’t quite feel any longer, clutching the side of the car for support as he catches his breath.

“one more please?” says Benrey.

Okay, Gordon isn’t _that_ disappointed. “Fuck no. I’ll watch you guys give it another go, though, and it’ll almost be like I’m up there with you.”

“Not really,” says Bubby, head tilting back and forth, but he slides out of the car after Gordon. He swallows, very deliberate and very familiar. “I believe I’ve had enough of this for the night as well, though.”

“Uh-huh. Didn’t look down, huh?”

Sliding up his glasses, Bubby ignores this. Gordon snorts.

“If you’re sure, then we won’t force you, Dr. Bubby, Dr. Pussy,” says Coomer.

“Thanks, but do you have to call me that?” asks Gordon, to no avail. Bubby snickers.

Benrey boos again. Tommy and Darnold both nod, Tommy more mournful about this but already scooting over to leave the two of them left in the seat more room.

Gordon, waving, and Bubby, shouting something unintelligible, stand back as the rollercoaster kicks into gear again, Mr. Coolatta interrupting the flow of space-time for another brief instant to send his son and his remaining friends rocketing across the tracks. The car seems to be going even faster this time. Legality matters very little in this situation, but Gordon hopes it’s at least safe.

Watching the rollercoaster from afar makes it seem like an even more solid end to the day, like a reflective and celebratory closing cutscene the devs clearly blew fifty-percent of their budget on. It’s a celebration they’ve earned (well, most of them), though, so to hell with it.

All in all, Gordon decides, this hadn’t been that terrible a plan at all.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like i should state for the record: i don't take hlvrai shipping seriously i'm just here for the laffs <3 so this is actually schrodinger's frenrey where it is simultaneously mutually unrequited, just one-sided, and nonexistent. and i think i might have accidentally implied frenmy too? sorry about it??? that said i think boomer is objectively the best for the name alone
> 
> this is possibly THE only one-off i have stopped to rewrite before even finishing the first draft because i went so off the rails, so here are some cut ideas:  
> \- balloon aliens didn't even make it into the first take but i like the thought.  
> \- benrey having a tiny worm on a string for joshua. i still consider this a thing here, he just doesn't mention it because i couldn't squeeze it into the altered ending scene (gordon originally did not ride the rollercoaster).  
> \- bubby and benrey raising their hands at a "who's they" comment in a cut conversation. nonbinary rights (ftr everyone here is trans/nonbinary and neurodivergent. while editing i made a specific note to add more Gordon ADHD Moments)
> 
> anyway, thanks for reading! i had a lot of fun with this so hopefully you did too. if you have time to spare, comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
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